The invention relates to a balanced arm for transferring (loading and/or unloading) a fluid product, such as petroleum products (liquefied natural gas, etc.).
It relates more particularly to a double-counterweight marine loading arm, equipped with a hydraulic coupler enabling transfer to be made between two ships moored side by side, between a ship and a platform or floating barge moored side by side, or between a jetty on which the loading arm is installed and a ship moored beside that jetty.
Examples of this kind of arm are described in the patent documents WO02/22491 and GB 1395909. One of the main drawbacks of the arms described in these documents is that their fixed base, which is relatively high, does not enable easy access to the arm, in particular for maintenance operations.
Arms without a base do exist, of the kind described in document U.S. Pat. No. 4,408,943, but their accessibility is not necessarily better, in particular due to the encumbrance generated by the tensioning systems implemented.